A soft microprocessor (also called softcore microprocessor or a soft processor) is a microprocessor core that can be wholly implemented using logic synthesis. It can be implemented via different semiconductor devices containing programmable logic (e.g., FPGA, CPLD), including both high-end and commodity variations.[1]
Most systems, if they use a soft processor at all, only use a single soft processor. However, a few designers tile as many soft cores onto an FPGA as will fit.[2] In those multi-core systems, rarely used resources can be shared between all the cores in a cluster.
While many people put exactly one soft microprocessor on a FPGA, a sufficiently large FPGA can hold two or more soft microprocessors, resulting in a multi-core processor. The number of soft processors on a single FPGA is limited only by the size of the FPGA.[3] Some people have put dozens or hundreds of soft microprocessors on a single FPGA.[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] This is one way to implement massive parallelism in computing and can likewise be applied to in-memory computing.
A soft microprocessor and its surrounding peripherals implemented in a FPGA is less vulnerable to obsolescence than a discrete processor.[9] [10] [11]
| Processor | Developer | Open source | Bus support | Notes | Project home | Description language | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| based on the ARM instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| Amber | Conor Santifort | Wishbone | ARMv2a 3-stage or 5-stage pipeline | Project page at Opencores | Verilog | |||
| Cortex-M1 | ARM | http://www.arm.com/products/system-ip/interconnect/index.php | 70–200MHz, 32-bit RISC | http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html | Verilog | |||
| based on the AVR instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| Navré | Sébastien Bourdeauducq | Direct SRAM | Atmel AVR-compatible 8-bit RISC | Project page at Opencores | Verilog | |||
| pAVR | Doru Cuturela | Atmel AVR-compatible 8-bit RISC | Project page at Opencores | VHDL | ||||
| softavrcore | Andras Pal | Standard AVR buses (core-coupled I/O, synchronous SRAM, synchronous program ROM) | Atmel AVR-compatible 8-bit RISC (up to AVR5), peripherals and SoC features included | Project page at Opencores | Verilog | |||
| based on the MicroBlaze instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| AEMB | Shawn Tan | Wishbone | MicroBlaze EDK 3.2 compatible | AEMB | Verilog | |||
| MicroBlaze | Xilinx | PLB, OPB, FSL, LMB, AXI4 | Xilinx MicroBlaze | |||||
| OpenFire | Virginia Tech CCM Lab | OPB, FSL | Binary compatible with the MicroBlaze | https://web.archive.org/web/20090724052731/http://www.ccm.ece.vt.edu/~scraven/openfire.html[12] | Verilog | |||
| SecretBlaze | LIRMM, University of Montpellier / CNRS | Wishbone | MicroBlaze ISA, VHDL | SecretBlaze | VHDL | |||
| based on the MCS-51 instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| MCL51 | MicroCore Labs | Ultra-small-footprint microsequencer-based 8051 core | 312 Artix-7 LUTs. Quad-core 8051 version is 1227 LUTs. | MCL51 Core | ||||
| TSK51/52 | Altium | Wishbone / Intel 8051 | 8-bit Intel 8051 instruction set compatible, lower clock cycle alternative | Embedded Design on Altium Wiki | ||||
| based on the MIPS instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| BERI | University of Cambridge | MIPS | Project page | Bluespec | ||||
| Dossmatik | René Doss | Pipelined bus | MIPS I instruction set pipeline stages | Dossmatik | VHDL | |||
| TSK3000A | Altium | Wishbone | 32-bit R3000-style RISC modified Harvard-architecture CPU | Embedded Design on Altium Wiki | ||||
| based on the PicoBlaze instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| PacoBlaze | Pablo Bleyer | Compatible with the PicoBlaze processors | PacoBlaze | Verilog | ||||
| PicoBlaze | Xilinx | Xilinx PicoBlaze | VHDL, Verilog | |||||
| based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| f32c | University of Zagreb | AXI, SDRAM, SRAM | 32-bit, RISC-V / MIPS ISA subsets (retargetable), GCC toolchain | f32c | VHDL | |||
| NEORV32 | Stephan Nolting | Wishbone b4, AXI4 | rv32[i/e] [m] [a] [c] [b] [u] [Zfinx] [Zicsr] [Zifencei], RISC-V-compliant, CPU & SoC available, highly customizable, GCC toolchain | GitHub OpenCores | VHDL | |||
| VexRiscv | SpinalHDL | SpinalHDL | AXI4 / Avalon | 32-bit, RISC-V, up to 340MHz on Artix 7. Up to 1.44DMIPS/MHz. | https://github.com/SpinalHDL/VexRiscv | VHDLVerilog (SpinalHDL) | ||
| based on the SPARC instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| LEON2(-FT) | ESA | AMBA2 | SPARC V8 | ESA | VHDL | |||
| LEON3/4 | Aeroflex Gaisler | AMBA2 | SPARC V8 | Aeroflex Gaisler | VHDL | |||
| OpenPiton | Princeton Parallel Group | Manycore SPARC V9 | OpenPiton | Verilog | ||||
| OpenSPARC T1 | Sun | 64-bit | OpenSPARC.net | Verilog | ||||
| Tacus/PIPE5 | TemLib | Pipelined bus | SPARC V8 | TEMLIB | VHDL | |||
| based on the x86 instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| CPU86 | HT-Lab | 8088-compatible CPU in VHDL | cpu86 | VHDL | ||||
| MCL86 | MicroCore Labs | 8088 BIU provided. Others easy to create. | Cycle accurate 8088/8086 implemented with a microsequencer. Less than 2% utilization of Kintex-7. | MCL86 Core | ||||
| s80x86 | Jamie Iles | Custom | 80186-compatible GPLv3 core | s80x86 | SystemVerilog | |||
| Zet | Zeus Gómez Marmolejo | Wishbone | x86 PC clone | Zet | Verilog | |||
| ao486 | Aleksander Osman | Avalon | i486 SX compatible core | ao486 | Verilog | |||
| based on the PowerPC/Power instruction set architecture | ||||||||
| PowerPC 405S | IBM | CoreConnect | 32-bit PowerPC v.2.03 Book E | IBM | Verilog | |||
| PowerPC 440S | IBM | CoreConnect | 32-bit PowerPC v.2.03 Book E | IBM | Verilog | |||
| PowerPC 470S | IBM | CoreConnect | 32-bit PowerPC v.2.05 Book E | IBM | Verilog | |||
| Microwatt | IBM/OpenPOWER | Wishbone | 64-bit PowerISA 3.0 proof of concept | Microwatt @ Github | VHDL | |||
| Chiselwatt | IBM/OpenPOWER | Wishbone | 64-bit PowerISA 3.0 | Chiselwatt @ Github | Chisel | |||
| Libre-SOC | Libre-SoC.org | Wishbone | 64-bit PowerISA 3.0. CPU/GPU/VPU implementation and custom vector instructions | Libre-SoC.org | python/nMigen | |||
| A2I | IBM/OpenPOWER | Custom PBus | 64-bit PowerPC 2.6 Book E. In order core | A2I @ Github | VHDL | |||
| A2O | IBM/OpenPOWER | Custom PBus | 64-bit PowerPC 2.7 Book E. Out of order core | A2O @ Github | Verilog | |||
| Other architectures | ||||||||
| ARC | ARC International, Synopsys | 16/32/64-bit ISA RISC | DesignWare ARC | Verilog | ||||
| ERIC5 | Entner Electronics | 9-bit RISC, very small size, C-programmable | ERIC5 | VHDL | ||||
| H2 CPU | Richard James Howe | Custom | 16-bit Stack Machine, designed to execute Forth directly, small | H2 CPU | VHDL | |||
| Instant SoC | FPGA Cores | Custom | 32-bit RISC-V M Extension, SoC defined by C++ | Instant SoC | VHDL | |||
| JOP | Martin Schoeberl | SimpCon / Wishbone (extension) | Stack-oriented, hard real-time support, executing Java bytecode directly | Jop | VHDL | |||
| LatticeMico8 | Lattice | Wishbone | LatticeMico8 | Verilog | ||||
| LatticeMico32 | Lattice | Wishbone | LatticeMico32 | Verilog | ||||
| LXP32 | Alex Kuznetsov | Wishbone | 32-bit, 3-stage pipeline, register file based on block RAM | lxp32 | VHDL | |||
| MCL65 | MicroCore Labs | Ultra-small-footprint microsequencer-based 6502 core | 252 Spartan-7 LUTs. Clock cycle-exact. | MCL65 Core | ||||
| MRISC32-A1 | Marcus Geelnard | Wishbone, B4/pipelined | 32-bit RISC/Vector CPU implementing the MRISC32 ISA | MRISC32 | VHDL | |||
| NEO430 | Stephan Nolting | Wishbone (Avalon, AXI4-Lite) | 16-bit MSP430 ISA-compatible, very small size, many peripherals, highly customizable | NEO430 | VHDL | |||
| Nios, Nios II | Altera | Avalon | Altera Nios II | Verilog | ||||
| OpenRISC | OpenCores | Wishbone | 32-bit; done in ASIC, Actel, Altera, Xilinx FPGA. | https://openrisc.io/ | Verilog | |||
| SpartanMC | TU Darmstadt / TU Dresden | Custom (AXI support in development) | 18-bit ISA (GNU Binutils / GCC support in development) | SpartanMC | Verilog | |||
| SYNPIC12 | Miguel Angel Ajo Pelayo | PIC12F compatible, program synthesised in gates | nbee.es | VHDL | ||||
| xr16 | Jan Gray | XSOC abstract bus | 16-bit RISC CPU and SoC featured in Circuit Cellar Magazine #116-118 | XSOC/xr16 | Schematic | |||
| YASEP | Yann Guidon | Direct SRAM | 16 or 32 bits, RTL in VHDL & asm in JS, microcontroller subset : ready | yasep.org (Firefox required) | VHDL | |||
| ZipCPU | Gisselquist Technology | Wishbone, B4/pipelined | 32-bit CPU targeted for minimal FPGA resource usage | zipcpu.com | Verilog | |||
| ZPU | Zylin AS | Wishbone | Stack based CPU, configurable 16/32 bit datapath, eCos support | Zylin CPU | VHDL | |||
| RISC5 | Niklaus Wirth | Niklaus Wirth | Custom | Running a complete graphical Oberon System including an editor and compiler. Software can be developed and ran on the same FPGA board. | www.projectoberon.com/ | Verilog | ||